Today's Confession

A song from Sunday - "A prayer of one afflicted."


I have no words for today's sin.
Only pictures.
Metaphors.
Because today's sin is too vivid for words.
It has light and life, smell and texture,
Its reality is suffocating.


Picture one:
A woman of stone.
A heart of stone, yes, that's where this began.
My heart turned cold, a while back.
And it has transfused the blind, stiff rot throughout my inner world.
Now, I'm all stone.
So hard that the bench beneath me is numbing and trying to rub life back into the grain of its wood.
And a stale laugh escapes my rock lips at the futility.
And my void stone eyes die another death: deadened many times over.
Can you see me?  Can you picture it?  Touch me?  Feel the cold under your fingers?
Can you?


Picture two:
A woman of grass.
Not the green, lush, life kind.  The yellow, dead, fragile grass.
If you touch it, it crumbles.
And here am I, the frightened scarecrow, cringing from healing hands.
Fleeing from friends.
Rustling in the wind, all dry, all dead, all powerless.
Can you see me?  Can you hear my rustle?  Can you see my thirst?  Feel my parched strands?
Can you?


Picture three:
A woman of smoke.
A ghost, a specter.
Opaque.
People try to grasp, hold, love.
But they are surprised to find only air roiling around their fingers.
I am kind enough to leave tendrils of ash on their hands.
Proof of me.
And on I fly.
Can you see me?  Do you feel my homelessness?  Can you smell the burnt hands?  Hear the surprised cries?
Can you?


Can you see me?!?


No, words won't do.
Only pictures.
Only light and life, smell and texture.


And I and the poet yell:
"My days pass away like smoke,
And my bones burn like a furnace.
My heart is struck down like grass and has withered;
I am like a desert owl of the wilderness,
Like an owl of the waste places...
My days are like an evening shadow;
I wither away like grass."


Only pictures.


Unless there was a word that could breathe off the page.
Unless there was a word that could grasp smoke, revive dead grass, melt a heart of stone.
A Shepherd who held me in his hand.
Living water.
A purifying fire.
Unless...


The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
And we have seen his glory.
Can you see me?






Excerpts from Psalm 102